What happened in Paris was wrong. A group of militant Terrorists decided they were going to carry out aggressive acts of murder against an innocent population. But why? And how were they able to be so effective?

There are multiple points to this issue, and the first is fairly obvious to me: the people were sitting ducks.

How, in France where people are not allowed to own guns and militant grade weapons, do terrorists get guns and weapons to carry out acts of mass murder? I thought it was against the law to have them, and surely just because guns are against the law in France, it automatically forbids the bad guys from getting a hold of them?

"The law says no guns?? Drat, foiled again," said no mass murderer ever.

When you take away the freedom of a population to keep and bear arms, they turn into targets who must rely on the arm of the government for protection. And as we've seen with this attack, governments are terrible at protecting their own people, even though supposedly they've made the country "safer" by making it illegal for an individual to own the means of self-defense.

Then we have the problem of government in the first place.

Do you want to know what the real problem is? Why ISIS exists in the first place? How they got their start? The answer is simple:

After decades of US involvement in the Middle East, intervening in conflicts and civil wars it had no business being in, animosity towards the United States and its allies grew. It only makes it easier to grow when the United States is bombing Doctors Without Borders to get at their own targets. For every terrorist that the States kills, multiple innocent civilians are killed in the Middle East as well. The military simply calls them "collateral damage," not willing to admit what it really was "murder."

This makes it easier for hard line, religious fundamentalists to spread their message of violence to new recruits, especially when that new recruit had a family member blown up like when the United States tried to go after one terrorist by blowing up an entire hospital.

Military involvement and occupation of foreign nations increases animosity towards the occupiers. How would we feel if suddenly the Austrialians put military bases in all of our cities and tried to tell us what to do, at the same time carrying out drone strikes to bomb neighborhoods in order to catch a kid who jacked a Snickers bar from a convenience store? It's called blowback, and it's a very real phenomenon.

That brings us to ISIS specifically. Why does ISIS have the power they do? Who enabled them?

ISIS started out fleeing Iraq when they realized that the US military was kicking their ass. So they went to try and find an easier target, and they found one in Syria fighting with Rebels against Assad, the Syrian dictator.

Now, the United States, in all its eagerness to "rid the world of dictators" (forget the fact our own government is somewhat of a dictatorship, though this fact is glossed over by starry eyed patriots and State-worshipers), we decided we were going to send weapons and supplies to the rebels fighting against a dictatorship. The problem was, those weapons were flowing right into ISIS' grasp, who then used them to go back into Iraq when the US started a withdrawal to take over.

So we see now that

1. U.S. Involvement in the Middle East increases animosity in those that otherwise could care less about us, and drives people towards religious extremism when our own murderous efforts to kill terrorists harms the innocent.

2. The US government is so inept at recognizing threats and having any sort of strategy in the Middle-east, that they couldn't foresee that the same people they wanted to help in Syria were connected to the same terrorists we were supposedly fighting in Adghanistan, Iraq, and other places in the Middle East.

These bring me to my last point which strangely is my first point.

Governments around the world are going to use this tragedy in Paris as an excuse to beat the war drums. European nations, and you bet your ass the United States, will create all kinds of new measures to go after terrorists wherever they may be. Expect them to enact more policies of going after suspected terrorists at home in your own country, as well as sending more people to die overseas in needless wars.

Expect the US to bring back support for the Patriot act, to spy on American citizens "for their own protection." Such policies on the surface are designed to protect the people, but the only thing they end up doing is infringe upon the very liberties they are supposed to be protecting.

I guess we are supposed to give up our freedom so that the terrorists don't take our freedom.

I say no more. I won't let this tragedy, this murderous act of violence, frighten me into giving up my liberty for the sake of security. I will not just cry "help me, I'm scared," and let governments around the world use it as some excuse to see their own power expand, to start new decades long and unjust wars.

If you give up freedom for the sake of safety, you get none of either. For once you think you're free and safe because they government took guns out of society and is "fighting the terrorists," you've just become a sitting duck; a target with no means of defense.

The best way to protect yourselves and your families from these wackos who want to blow everything up is to arm yourself, protect yourself, and absolutely do not let your government be in charge of protecting you.

Because as I've hoped I outlined very clearly, government does a pretty shitty job of protecting you. The events in Paris show that.

#DropTheMike